'It's called Vantablack.'

The backstage chitchat had spanned flamingo ankles, gnomes and wetsuits. Now, it was about this new colour.

'It holds the world record as being the darkest ever man-made substance. Look.' Saffron held up her phone. I saw a photo of a man holding a black-painted circle that was so black, it looked like a Photoshop cut-out. 'It absorbs 99.9 percent of light!'

I kind of had in my mind that we already had all the colours... and yet people are working on creating new ones.

Artist Christian Furr describes this new back as being 'like dynamite in the art world.' However, it turns out that the artist Sir Anish Kapoor has been granted exclusive rights to use Vantablack, 'sparking a furious reaction from other artists,' according to the Daily Mail.

So I guess I won't be using this super-swanky colour myself any time soon.

'Yeah,' you might be thinking, 'but black isn't a colour.'

Well, that's true – I tend to never use pure black for shadows and dark areas in my paintings. I aways use a mix of other colours to reflect what's happening in the image – but that's exactly what black is – all the colours!